Poets and Poetry
by true knowledge and many disciplines. For the better understanding of the reader, I say that one becomes a poet in one of two ways. The first is through his own genius, excited and aroused by some inward and hidden force, termed frenzy and possession (occupazione) of the soul. To give an illustration of what I mean—the Blessed Francis, not through knowledge or scholarly discipline, but by possession and abstraction of mind, applied his soul so intensely to God, that he became as it were transfigured beyond human sense, and knew more of God than do the theologians through study and letters. So in poetry, one becomes a poet through an inner excitement, and through a certain application of the mind. This is the highest and most perfect kind of poetry; whence some say that poets are divine, others call them sacred, and others prophets, by reason of this abstraction and the frenzy whereof I speak. We have examples of this kind of poet in Orpheus and Hesiod. Orpheus had such power that stones and forests moved to the sound of his lyre. And Hesiod, though a rude, untaught shepherd, by merely drinking of the waters of the Castalian fountain, without any study whatsoever, became a supreme poet. We possess his works to-day, and they are of such sort that no lettered or scholarly poet surpasses them.
One class, then, is formed of those who become poets through an inner abstraction of the soul. The other class create their poetry by means of knowledge and study, by discipline, art, and forethought. Of this second sort was Dante. For it was by the study of philosophy, theology, astrology, arithmetic, and geometry, the reading of history, the meditation on many and various books, and by watching and fatigue in his studies, that he acquired the knowledge which he was to adorn and unfold in his poetry.
Since we have spoken of the nature, we will now speak of the name of poetry, in which is comprehended the substance. Albeit these are difficult matters to express in the vulgar idiom, nevertheless I will undertake their explanation, because our modern poets have not, in my opinion, clearly
91
